


Crisis is sweet and yet the Heart

by middlemarch



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, F/M, Introspection, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 20:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12848967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It was not a secret but she'd never tell.





	Crisis is sweet and yet the Heart

Was it a betrayal? The grass waved around her and the sky was not split with lightning or filled with heavy clouds. His breath was soft on her face and sweet and though he had not meant it, his eyes were closed. Still, he murmured _beautiful my beautiful beloved_. She had rarely been called beautiful, never beloved. She had not known how much she wanted to hear the words whispered against her heart. It was not a betrayal.

Was it a gift? He had held out a hand, beckoning, again and again. He had written a poem by candlelight and there was a spatter of wax in the corner like spoor, an encroachment he hadn’t noticed. He had not begged and he had not offered. When she pulled him down, he did not sigh. How long would the memory last in the dark? It was not a gift.

Was it a weight to even the scale? She thought of carrying each babe in her belly and the hours of the labor. She thought of how Ross had looked when she told him not to go—how many times, how many places! She felt Hugh in her arms, almost a stranger, just beginning to be dear, and remembered how Dwight’s eyes had rested upon the man, rested upon her, how he had not turned his face away. How he had nodded, solemn and undeceived. She felt hunger and parted her lips to taste. To take—Hugh’s cry and everything else. It was not a weight.

It was a revelation. She did not see herself in his dimming eyes, but she admitted she wanted to. She had said she wanted only a day, but she had meant a life of days. She discovered she did not want to quarrel with a man who loved her, that she wanted to hear him gasp first. Wordless and then not, to her glory. She found Demelza Poldark was not easily satisfied, not cowed; Demelza Poldark would walk back to the house where her children slept and her grief would be a bouquet she gathered as she walked, full of thrift and campion and dog rose. 

She had two lovers and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> More Demelza-centric Hugh and Ross musings, title from Emily Dickinson. Soupçon of Dwight Enys because of my fondness for the poor tormented doctor (though I'll never forget how long it took him to diagnose scurvy).


End file.
